Friday, November 10, 2017

NaNoWriMo: It's Not Just for Novels

November is that time once a year where seasoned and wannabe authors around the world commit to writing an at least 50,000-word novel. NaNoWriMo.org has a place to log word-count, as well as forums and live and virtual events for community and inspiration. It's all about getting the words on the page without overthinking and self-editing throughout the process.

I am all about setting goals, productivity, and community. And I love National Novel Writing Month. Anything that gets people writing, and supporting each other, is fine in my book. But, if you are not a novelist, or even if you are, there are other ways to participate and get to the 50,000 word count. In fact, there's an "other" category for novel genre.

Use NaNo to write:

1. A non-fiction book

2. A screenplay, teleplay, or stageplay

3. Creative non-fiction

A series of

4. Blog Posts

5. Poems

6. Short Stories

7. Articles

8. Essays

9. Interviews

10. Songs

You can do the mix and match approach. A little of everything til you get to 50,000 or even 25,000 words.

The first draft of anything is the most important, yet most difficult, first step. Once you have words on the page, you have something to revise and refine. Then, the real work starts!

It's not too late to sign up for this years NaNoWriMo. And, then, of course, there's always next year.

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What do you think? Are you participating/have you ever participated in NaNoWriMo? What kind of project? How does NaNo work for you or how do you use NaNo? Feel free to also share your NaNoWriMo profile link in the comments. And if you want to connect with me, my username is coastbunny.

Debra, I've never jumped into Nano. I've thought about it a couple of times, but never followed through. I like the idea of using it to create 25,000 - 50,000 words worth of blog posts for the year. Imagine having a year's worth of posts done in one month!

Karen, I "won" NaNo the first time I did it, several years ago. It really is fun to get all of those words out of your head in such a short period of time. Each year, I try to do a different "productivity" spin on it. While it's fun to get to that word count, which I do not always do, I take any and all progress as a victory.